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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28881915">Before We Begin</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanuaryWonder/pseuds/JanuaryWonder'>JanuaryWonder</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, WandaVision (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Backstory, Brutalist architecture inspired?, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Growing up in Eastern Europe, Probably canon non-compliant by the time the whole series is out, WandaVision Prequel - sort of, War Childhood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:00:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,219</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28881915</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanuaryWonder/pseuds/JanuaryWonder</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda's favorite game has always been inventing tales and seeing them come alive. </p><p>(loose collection of MCU Wanda's memories starting in her childhood and ending sometime around the beginning of the WandaVision show)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Pietro Maximoff &amp; Wanda Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff/Vision</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Other Windows, Stranger Rooms</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I had an idea, I chose to run with it. It is very likely canon won't follow, but until such a time - I suppose this could be considered a prequel to the series.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nothing breeds imagination quite like poverty.</p><p>Ask any kid who grew up without toy stores and shopping malls around the corner, any kid whose parents had to work three jobs and still scrounge at the end of the month to put meat on the table more than once a week. They'll tell you how the branch is transformed into a wand; that a piece of cardboard can be used to fashion a sword: they'll explain the magic behind the barbed wire's metamorphosis that ends with it becoming a crown.</p><p>Ask the boy crawling through the dirt with centerfolds stuffed into the collar of his T-shirt what they're for.</p><p>'A cape, <em>duh</em>!'</p><p>Ask the girl sitting in the corner of the room stacking empty egg packaging against the wall what's so special about it.</p><p>'I'm building a city, can't you tell?'</p><p>Ask Wanda, nine years old, why she's staring through the window at the building across the road – a matrix made of seventeen up and ten across – each box a different life, waiting to be discovered or imagined.</p><p>As the lights turn on and off, she skips from one story to the other, studiously keeping track of where she'd stopped each epic last. Some windows are easier to remember than others: Mister Petrovich, four up and seven to the right, has distinctively red curtains. The Boiko family have white gardenias along their windowsills. The cool twenty-something blonde who moved to the neighborhood from somewhere in Germany a year ago has what look like theatre production posters plastered against her walls – she has no curtains, which greatly helps Wanda with the story: she need only add the details to what she already observes.</p><p>Today, there is a man in the apartment, and they're sitting close together on the brown sofa, drinking black liquid from tall glasses. Wanda decides the man must be an enemy spy, lured by The German's good looks to come over and be poisoned. Perhaps not poisoned, she corrects herself, because that would make it difficult to continue if he unexpectedly pops by again (not likely, if history is any indication). Still, she decides to be merciful. He will only get a truth serum.</p><p>'Do you love me,' The German will ask him once he finishes the drink.</p><p>'I love you... against my better judgment,' he'll reply.</p><p>This is good plot, Wanda concludes. One spy in love with another, against his will, despite loyalty to his country. But The German would never be so dumb, she knows. The German is only toying with him, to extract information. She will play the game for a while, for as long as it's useful. Then, well: game over.</p><p>This is, perhaps, the most childish assumption she makes in the memory. That letting go can be so easy.</p><p>*</p><p>When war reached their apartment block, the imagination she'd perfected was finally put to good use. Pietro had usually teased her about the stories, but more often than not – during blackouts and over the screech of sirens that became a daily occurrence – he asked to be included.</p><p>'What's The German up to today?' He'd prompt a tale about his favorite character. Wanda was happy to indulge his curiosity – without electricity, she didn't have the on-and-off-switch dictating the channels anyway.</p><p>Eight months and a couple of days later, they lay huddled together in the carcass of what used to be their building; disemboweled by shelling. Hoping its exposed rebar bones will hold.</p><p>Begging for a distraction from the bomb lying next to them at the edge of the abyss, Pietro asked her to keep her eyes closed, to stop looking.</p><p>'Just tell me a story, lil' sis,' he whispered, afraid that speaking at a normal volume might be the last drop in the dangerously full glass of things-that-could-go-wrong, what finally sets it off.</p><p>'The German is dead,' Wanda cried. They'd seen the whole construction crumble into itself, minutes before the bombs had hit their own apartment. Nobody could've survived. Mister Petrovich with his red curtains. The Boikos, and their gardenias. Cancelled, cancelled, cancelled. </p><p>Pietro clutched her forcefully, until sobs couldn't find a way to the surface anymore; the tight embrace against her ribs keeping them in.</p><p>'Never mind The German,' Pietro huffed, almost angrily. 'I wanna know about apartment 14, in building 6b.' Their home, what was left of it. 'Tell me about that.'</p><p>'Alright, Pétja. Alright. I will tell it now. Ready?'</p><p>'Yes.'</p><p>'Prepare yourself, this is my best story.'</p><p>'Okay, Wan. Get on with it, will you?'</p><p>Though Pétja had asked her to, Wanda didn't close her eyes. She stared straight into the flickering red light, incorporating its rhythm into her story. Claiming the bomb, before it could claim them.</p><p>'The brother and sister from 14-6b will survive the attack of the Stark robot,' she began. It was easy enough, once she'd decided on the first sentence. Words flooded her mind - the emptiness of pain suddenly replaced by a resolve to imagine a different, better ending. She could save them, there was still time. </p><p>'The robot is a baby. It does not know how to kill, not yet. How to recognize the enemy. They are bruised and covered in dust – so dusty, that it cannot even see them as human. The robot is a baby, and it is stupid. It sits there looking straight at the siblings, not seeing them. It will never see them, until they want to be seen. Until it is too late.'</p><p>Looking back, the bomb did have such an appearance – with its sleek oval shape, it was a newborn wrapped in a blanket white as snow. Only a child could've fathomed a world so cruel, one where babies and children fight for survival in a silent standoff. But it wasn't a dream, was it, it wasn't something Wanda had made up. There was the new bomb, and the new hole which had sucked in their parents; there was a new Pétja and there was a new Wan, and the pulsing of the light. Everything – the entire world – had been made new that afternoon. The only thing left to be decided was whether the movie would have a sequel. </p><p>Wanda can't remember how long she'd spoken – only that she was still in the middle of the tale when the search and rescue team found them. As they were being taken into the firefighters' strong arms, to be returned to ground by a construction crane, she'd turned around to take one last look of the bomb, to never forget the face of her enemy. 'Stark' was the last word she saw before the adrenaline from the previous two days finally left her system; before the last of the child she'd been dissipated into the darkness of a dreamless void. </p><p>*</p><p>Her mama would sew her costumes for the carnival each February on the rusty, old Singer machine she had to power with her foot. Wanda would ask to be this Disney princess or that monster, and they'd find an old curtain or tablecloth most suited to the color-scheme, paint flowers, blood stains or polka dots over the food stains. She never noticed the differences between what was on the screen and what she was wearing, content to twirl around her classroom to the great envy of her friends whose mothers weren't as handy with the needle, or as resourceful. As a child, she'd felt lucky enough simply to have a dress with some sparkles on it.</p><p>The war changed that. Suddenly, there were no more costumes, no more masks to hide behind. Her aunt, mama's unmarried older sister they were sent to live with, didn't have the same knack for DIY projects. She didn't have much of a knack for children, either.</p><p>'I told Ina, so many times,' she'd repeat almost every evening while rinsing dinner plates and banging them one against the other on the dish rack. 'I <em>told</em> her, we need to leave this godforsaken place. Go to America. Canada. <em>Sweden</em>. Anywhere, not to stay here. But no, my sister, always the smart one. And now, what does she have of her teaching degree? What do her children have? Me!'</p><p>While not one for sewing, Aunt Mila did at least enjoy American TV. She let Wanda watch shows with her after dinner, caring little for homework or bedtimes. Pietro rarely joined in, having gotten an old walk-man as a gift from one of Mila's exes and a couple of mixtapes from his friends at school. He'd listen to the same three tapes over and over again in the back of the room, often forgetting he wasn't alone and belting out the lyrics at full volume. The two days after the shelling, in which he'd had to stay completely still, had soured him on the idea of silence for good.</p><p>He resented her engagement with Mila's shows, as if they were somehow worse than his Western music. Michael Jackson had been especially popular at the time – he'd used every opportunity to practice his 'moonwalk', which seemed just as preposterous as Mila crying at the end of each Passions episode (things reached them with 'a bit' of a time lag). Wanda had made sure he was aware of this fact.</p><p>If she hadn't mocked him as much, perhaps their lives would've panned out differently. Pétja had always been stubborn, always determined to prove people wrong – he'd wanted to show her he had, in deed, been <em>born</em> for moonwalking. It wasn't a coincidence, the special gift he'd gotten after Strucker's experiments. When she remembers him using his powers now, it almost seems like he'd been gliding through the air, having perfected that craft he'd worked on so diligently as a boy. </p><p>*</p><p>By the time they turned fifteen, Wanda had realized girls like her would always be the extras in others' stories: mounds of dead flesh at the side of the road in war dramas, victims saved by conflicted American protagonists. Sokovian orphans flaunted to the world like art pieces or zoo animals; refugees whose strong accents one struggles to comprehend. Only, her mama had been an English teacher and she'd learned to speak English perfectly from a young age – with a bit of an old-time, all-American inflection , sure– but there was no <em>So</em>kovia in there, <em>so</em> to speak.</p><p>Yet another mold she couldn't neatly fit into. </p><p>Despite the initial optimistic prognoses, the war carried on. The <em>occupation</em>. Politicians were still pretending they had leverage over the foreign forces governing their citizens' lives, but it was clear to everyone – even fifteen-year-olds – they had no power left. Sokovia had long since stopped being a country: it had become a punching bag swinging between the East and West, waiting for the next blow to land. Who from? Did it even matter?</p><p>Wanda stopped watching Mila's TV shows. Pietro stopped listening to Michael Jackson. They were both balanced on the edge of their seats, waiting for a different transmission to begin. A revolution.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Bella Ciao!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The evening before they were supposed to follow List's instructions to the Hydra base, Pietro came home with what looked like a loot from a beauty store robbery.</p><p>'Choose one, sis,' he said, emptying the contents of the plastic bag onto the living room couch. 'Tomorrow, we become whoever we want to be.'</p><p>His grin was infectious, Wanda couldn't help the flutter of hope in her stomach. It had been so long, since she'd last allowed herself to feel anything except resignation.</p><p>'You're doomed,' Mila moaned, watching the scene from the kitchen doorway. '<em>Doomed. </em>We all are.'</p><p>'Oh, shut it,' Pietro snapped back. It was <em>their</em> moment, he wouldn't let her intrude. 'We're not your children.'</p><p>Mila looked hurt for a second, then shrugged and retreated back to the kitchen. There was nothing left to say, she'd spoken her mind on the matter years ago.</p><p>*</p><p>The first time they took part in the demonstrations, Mila had attempted to 'ground' them for a week. It didn't take. </p><p>Pietro left the apartment to see his friends two hours later, laughing as she chased him to the door. Fifteen minutes hadn't passed before Wanda followed. They were seventeen, and angry.</p><p>The second time, they didn't even try to lie about where they were going.</p><p>'You don't <em>give a shit</em> that these people <em>murdered</em> our parents,' Pietro accused Mila standing in the communal hallway, their discussion providing just the right amount of afternoon amusement for the neighbors. She was clutching the sleeve of Wanda's jacket with both hands, trying to prevent her from leaving. 'Go back inside. Watch their TV, drink in their ideology. You think you'll be safe because of that? You'll die like the rest of us when the bombs come again, only you won't have done a single thing to be remembered by. You'll die less than human.'</p><p>Wanda flinched at the last sentence. Pietro was not one to mince words, especially with their aunt. She didn't exactly make it easy for him, either.</p><p>'<em>Insolent brat</em>,' Mila spat back. 'What do <em>you</em> know? About the choices I've made? What <em>I</em> wanted from my life? <em>My</em> pain?'</p><p>'Auntie, come with us,' Wanda tried to persuade her, ignoring Pietro fuming behind her. 'We'll stay away from the violence. We'll just protest. For independence. For <em>peace.</em>'</p><p>'<em>Just </em>protest? For peace?' Mila scoffed. 'You are smarter than this, my girl. I thought you were more like me, that you had a survival instinct.'</p><p>'What good is survival?' Pietro asked defiantly, suddenly dropping his voice to a whisper. It made it all the more haunting, after the yelling. 'We want to <em>live</em>.'</p><p>Mila considered his words. Slowly, she let go of Wanda's sleeve.</p><p>'And you say <em>I</em> am the idealist here,' she laughed. She'd meant for it to sound sarcastic, but Wanda heard the echo of sadness she'd tried to repress. For all her faults, Mila did care for them – perhaps not like she would her own children, but care she did. They were all she'd had left to remind her of a sister she'd once loved well enough to stay in a failing regime for.</p><p>That night, after they'd dodged the soldiers who had no hope of trailing every local kid around a tower block where every street corner looked exactly the same, they came home. Wanda sat down at the table in the kitchen, where a pot of gizzard stew had been left to simmer on the stovetop.</p><p>A small act of kindness. A peace offering. </p><p>'Will you tell me about mama,' she asked, unsure she'd get a response. 'What she was like when she was my age?'</p><p>'Stubborn, like that brother of yours,' Mila said approaching her chair, her tone fond - almost. It was one of the few times Wanda would hear it, in reference to Pietro. Her aunt put her hand, damp from washing the dishes, on her shoulder, then started running her fingers through Wanda's long hair, working out the knots made by running with the bandana around her face.</p><p>'I used to braid her hair every morning, before school. She was the prettiest little thing...' Her voice trailed off. </p><p>'She was smart, too,' Wanda added petulantly.</p><p>'I guess,' Mila sighed. 'For better or worse.' Her hands dropped back to her sides. 'Eat.'</p><p>'Auntie? Will you be alright?'</p><p>Wanda didn't have to qualify the question with a time-frame, they'd both known for a while their little arrangement was reaching its sell-by date. Sooner or later, it wouldn't make much of a difference.</p><p>'You'd be better off asking yourself that, Dada,' she used the nickname her mom had given her as a child. Wanda hadn't heard it in years. </p><p>'She'll be fine,' Pietro said solemnly, curtly, emerging from the darkness of the hallway. 'I'll take care of her.'</p><p> '<em>We'll</em> take care of <em>each other</em>,' Wanda corrected him. A nod. </p><p>Mila said nothing. She walked over to Pietro standing in the doorway. He didn't move to let her pass. They stared at one another for a minute that seemed to stretch for hours. Mila patted his cheek in the end, walked around him. He rolled his eyes and ladled some stew into a bowl, sat down to eat.</p><p>'All this <em>drama</em>,' he laughed. 'She thinks she's living in one of those shows sometimes, I swear.'</p><p>Wanda didn't find it funny in the least.</p><p>*</p><p>Smoke, the scent of burning fruit. Bodies pressed together like ripe peaches, bruising where they chafed against one another. The feel of cold thick plastic against her cheek, in contrast to Pietro's warm hand against her back – sweaty – pulling her away from the frenzy.</p><p>People throwing punches around blindly, having stopped caring who they hit, friend or foe. Shots fired. Screams on their tail.</p><p>Wanda's sneakers slipping against the cobble stones, red and sleek with blood. Lights dancing in front of her eyes, blurring her vision. Everything was slipping, sliding, there was nothing to hold on to. Her bandana fell of her nose and around her neck. Exposed.</p><p>'Pétja?'</p><p>'I'm here,' the voice came inches away from her ear. 'Got you. Don't worry, I've got you.'</p><p>Only she wasn't calling out to be saved. She'd wanted to do the saving.</p><p>'Alright?' Pietro asked as they regained their ground, away from the soldiers again on the edge of the crowd. In the front nevertheless.</p><p>'You're bleeding,' she realized in horror. A dark red snake was squirming down his neck and into the collar of his grey sweatshirt.</p><p>'Just a graze,' he shrugged it off. 'Thought I lost you for a moment there.'</p><p>'No air,' she shook her head, the lights in her field of vision finally receding. She looked around. There were several bodies in the empty space between the protesters and the police. The fighting had stopped, but nobody was moving. Not to advance, not to run away. A standoff ripped from one of those Westerns her dad used to watch, that she'd found boring. She finally understood, then: the tension that can exist in stillness, it is louder than any explosion.</p><p>Cameras focused on Pietro and her. She saw them turn, behind the soldiers - she could swear she could also hear the whirr of the mechanics as they zoomed in on their faces. It was probably true. You could hear a needle drop in that calm. </p><p>'Out,' Wanda whispered.</p><p>'What?' Pietro thought she was talking to him, until she raised her voice. Until he realized she'd spoken in English.</p><p>'Out,' he repeated after her.</p><p>The people in the vicinity were looking at them, then at each other. Nodding.</p><p>'Out! Out! Out!'</p><p>Her face finally uncovered, the air hit it full force. She took long hungry breaths. <em>Out</em>.</p><p><em>This is what freedom tastes like</em>, she decided as the spoken chants turned louder. Angrier. She turned her head to stare directly into the camera. <em>Let them see. Let them witness</em>.</p><p>It didn't take long for the authorities to knock on Mila's door, after. The demo had taken place on a Sunday. By Tuesday, a man in uniform had showed up, asking to speak to the twins alone. However, he hadn't come looking for a quick arrest, to ingratiate himself with the foreign military intelligence. Once Mila was out of earshot, he turned his gaze away from the window and observed Pietro, then Wanda, with a spark of interest and something else – something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Amusement? Satisfaction?</p><p>'Do you want revenge?' The man who'd introduced himself as List asked, simply. He then chuckled, shaking his head before either of them could even think to reply. 'Silly question.'</p><p>It had been, in deed.</p><p>*</p><p>There weren't as many color options in Pietro's loot as it had first appeared. There was, however, a red-verging-on-orange dye: the model in the photo on the box reminded Wanda of old pictures of Lucille Ball. Her mama had adored the actress – apparently, <em>I Love Lucy</em> was one of the rare US shows her own mother had allowed her to watch.</p><p>She took the tube to the bathroom and slathered it all over her hair. <em>I will be the heroine now, </em>she thought waiting for the dye to do its magic.</p><p>The end result was, of course, nothing like the picture: it was much darker on her unbleached, ashy hair. But it <em>was</em> a change. At least it didn't look as disastrous as Pietro's bleach-blond hair, like a hen perched on top of his head and his dark eyebrows.</p><p>'What're you trying to become,' she asked him, giggling. 'A member of Scooter?'</p><p>When he looked at his reflection in the mirror, he giggled as well.</p><p>'Maybe this will scare the Americans more than the bombs,' he joked.</p><p>'Yes, we will threaten them with bad hair,' Wanda laughed. 'Top-notch planning, Pétja.'</p><p>The giggled returned every time their eyes met. They didn't stop laughing until they reached the hidden base in the forest after a four-hour hike.</p><p>'Name?' The soldier at the gate asked them, as if they would've known how to get there without a handler.</p><p>'Maximoff, Pietro and Wanda,' her brother replied.</p><p>'I need to hear it from her, too,' the soldier shrugged, almost apologetically. As if asking a woman to speak for herself was a mere formality, a nuisance to be excused.</p><p>'My name is Wanda Maximoff,' she repeated, in the thickest Sokovian accent she could muster. Pietro raised an eyebrow. She shrugged.</p><p>It was the last piece of the puzzle to click in her new life, her personal message to the usurper. <em>Fuck you and your language. I will not bend. You will have to deal with me as I am – all I am. Female. Nineteen. Angry. Sokovian</em>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I haven't seen episode 3 yet, so this might already be veering into AU-stuff, but I've now constructed my head/fic- canon, so it is what it is. :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Down There On A Visit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I wanted to acknowledge the fact that I've changed the chapter number from 5 to '?' (which isn't a number, more of a visual representation of a shrug). Five definitely wouldn't have been enough to cover all the ground I have in mind since we're on three now and still in Sokovia, pre-MCU-Wanda.  </p><p>A second thing that needs to be acknowledged is my shamelessness in stealing the chapter title from Christopher Isherwood.</p><p>That said, if you have thoughts, criticisms, anything of the sort, do let me know in the comments! :D</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>'I made a friend this week,' Wanda finally broke the silence.</p><p>Mila nodded, not looking up from her cup of coffee. Neither had expected to see the other again, after Hydra. <em>It's likely she'll never see Pietro</em>, Wanda thought. From whatever misplaced sense of propriety, she had decided to use her day of leave to come to the city and visit her aunt. Pietro had laughed the suggestion off, opting for beers with the kids from the facility.</p><p>'They are the family I <em>chose</em>,' he'd pointed out as they stood on the crossroads, party district to the left, the tower block where they grew up to the right.</p><p>Most of the volunteers weren't even Sokovian: they had nobody to visit close by (if they had anybody left to visit at all). Their reasons for joining were as diverse as the places they'd been recruited from: revenge against the US for sleights both personal and ideological, hatred towards Stark, desire for power, for strength, imagined duty to their respective countries. However hateful she found some of the recruits, there was no denying they all had at least one thing in common: the belly-aching need never to be helpless again.</p><p>Wanda could work with that. After all, it was what had prompted her to become part of the protest crowd in the first place, what had finally ended in them saying 'yes' to List. Not even revenge he'd thought would be so easy to sell them on – beneath it, there lay a more important promise: that they would be the ones choosing who to save.</p><p>'How is your brother?' Mila asked with a snort.</p><p>'He's Pétja,' Wanda shrugged as if that was all the explanation needed.</p><p>'Finally came into his own, I bet,' Mila sighed.</p><p>'I tried to get him to come with me, but.. someone needed to show the foreign kids around.'</p><p>Mila finally raised her head with the express purpose of rolling her eyes at Wanda.</p><p>'You don't need to sugarcoat it, I'm surprised <em>you're</em> even here.'</p><p>Wanda was equally surprised, and somewhat regretful after enduring the awkward atmosphere of the kitchen that suddenly felt smaller, to the point of being claustrophobic, after the huge canteen at the Hydra compound. She wasn't even sure Mila was happy to see her. This brought to mind the other reason of her visit, which was at least tangible and could be more easily accomplished than reassuring her aunt they were both okay and grateful for the refuge she'd provided for almost ten years. She hadn't had to.</p><p>'I wanted to take some things, trinkets,' she started. Mila raised an eyebrow.</p><p>'Such as?'</p><p>'Just some photos, of mom and dad, if you have any. I remember seeing some as a kid in your albums. I realized we didn't have any, and I'd like to..'</p><p>Mila rose from the creaky chair and gestured towards the living room with a flick of her wrist. After a couple minutes' search, Wanda had a shoebox filled with photos, ticket stubs and catalogues in her lap, and a tower of old-fashioned leather-bound photo albums on her left. They smelled of dust and plastic and dead skin, inhabited by ghosts she'd seen before in family photos – mementos of Pietro and her first five birthdays, of which the celebrants were either deceased or peppered in tight clusters across the West. The maid of honor at their parents' wedding, her boyfriend, their grandma's youngest sister, the slightly older sister, the older sister's husband, their daughter, her husband, their son... on and on, they flashed with every arduous turn of the thick carboard pages, faces overlaid one on top of the other like some grotesque composite of their most distinguishing features, a monstrosity that could only come from a child's imagination.</p><p>As she flipped through the pages, Mila – who had chosen to stand above her and observe the process from over her shoulder – kept interrupting with explanations about the context of the more unfamiliar scenes.</p><p>'This was the park where your parents took you out walking every day,' she said, pointing to a photograph of a fountain rendered in black and white with her fat finger. It was a half-orb of mosaic tiles with holes in it where water shot up into the air, and even though Wanda had seen the thing in real life years later, the photo bled into her memory and sucked out all color, leaving it in grayscale. She was also in that photo, a bald child with an enormous head. Mama was standing beside her, oversized spectacles balancing dangerously on her small nose; oversized perm taking up more space than the tops of the trees behind her; in an oversized coat to cover her lack of pregnancy fat lest someone think she did not give birth to twins at all.</p><p>There were other photos of her in the album, from before Pétja and her even existed. Wanda recognized the orange shirt which revealed her midriff, curls loosened by the salt of the sea. Another one, in which she was wearing a thick red jumper, her knees up on an armchair with one arm snaked tightly around them; the other holding a hyacinth up to her nose in a futile attempt to look mysterious. Her hair was short and perm-less then, it stuck to her face like glue. Even though already married, she'd had the appearance of a boy barely past puberty. Despite the years in-between the photos, she looked exactly the same: like a stranger.</p><p>Wanda wished she could call up an image of her the way she'd seen her, the way she <em>thought</em> she remembered her. The photographs were familiar, but they were familiar as <em>photographs</em>, the person in them was not her mother. She knew, rationally, that these were all photographs of the person who had been her mother, but simultaneously, her mother was not in those photographs. There was something off about her expressions, with the positioning of the hands, with the eyes. Her recollections of her parents were fleeting, there were fragments which seemed deceptively, almost palpably lived, but Mila had taught her enough about psychology for Wanda to guess they were only echoes, implants caused by repetition and the obsessive need to have a voice, a point of view that was her own. A need for agency, for more than second-hand observation.</p><p>„I wish I could <em>really</em> remember,“ she said as Mila finished a story about some distant cousin now living in Holland, who'd taken the pictures with the hyacinth.</p><p>„I wish I could forget,“ Mila replied.</p><p>The afterlife had also been recorded, but the albums which held it together were the kind you'd get free of charge for developing a roll of film – white and indistinguishable from one another apart from the logos of the studios they were developed in. They were easy to leaf through, photos often slipping out of the flimsy plastic sheets – the contrast indicative of the weight assigned to the memories they protected. A trip to the ZOO when they were twelve with one of Mila's boyfriends. A high-school production of Little Women in which Wanda played the role of Jo, Pétja sniggering at her in the period dress. Mila sitting on the couch with Wanda watching TV. Pétja rolling his eyes as he blew out fifteen candles on a nondescript walnut cake. The same cake, with sixteen candles. Seventeen.</p><p>Wanda carefully lifted the plastic to unglue it from the photos where they had almost melted together due to the passage of time. She took two of their parents' wedding – one for her and one for Pietro – and an unexpectedly lovely image of herself with Mila taken after their graduation ceremony.</p><p>'Can I?' She asked holding the photo up to her aunt.</p><p>'Take whatever you want,' Mila shrugged and feigned a cough to hide a tear slipping down her cheek.</p><p>It was time to go. Wanda hugged her tightly after putting on her jacket, the photos safe in an envelope in her pocket. Mila took her face in her hands, remnants of the grease she'd used while making cooking still coating her palms in a thin film, slipping against Wanda's cheeks.</p><p>'You are sure you don't want to stay for dinner? I made paprikash.'</p><p>Wanda chuckled – it was by far her <em>least</em> favorite dish.</p><p>'Nah, I'm good. We need to be going back soon.'</p><p>'Alright, if you say so. Take care of that brother of yours, yes? He is too impulsive, too... fast. No patience. He doesn't know how to be...careful. Boys often don't.'</p><p>'He's hardly a boy,' Wanda pointed out. They had both turned twenty since they'd last seen their aunt.</p><p>'Men are even worse,' Mila huffed.</p><p>'Okay, okay, I'll keep an eye out.'</p><p>Taking her hands away from Wanda's face, Mila caught an errant strand of her hair.</p><p>'It suits you,' she decided, somewhat amazed. 'Scarlet. Hmm.'</p><p>'I'll see you soon,' Wanda smiled and opened the door. She waved at Mila, who was standing at the apartment door.</p><p><em>Scarlet</em>, she mused, when she stepped into the elevator and looked at her reflection in the dirty mirror. Seeing the photos had flipped a switch in her she hadn't known existed. She'd been chafing in all places where her childhood fantasies touched the new reality, cutting her fingers on the sharp edges of the fragments of incomplete memories. Her hands stung from turning those album pages over and over again, in search of something she realized she would never find. Death by a thousand cuts.</p><p>'Goodbye, Wanda,' she sneered at the mirror once the elevator reached the ground floor. Turned, and didn't look back. A light drizzle had begun sometime during the afternoon, and she stepped out on the street, keeping the hood of her jacket down intentionally to feel the prickly drops on her face.</p><p>Her life suddenly began coming into focus, as if someone were turning a camera lens around and where once there were blurry shapes, solid lines resurfaced. She could see ahead, even if for only a mile or two to where Pétja would be with their friends, but it was further than she’d ever seen before, and clear.</p><p>The envelope with the photographs burned against her palm where her hand touched it inside her pocket. She did a 180 towards the building and dropped it through the slit of Mila’s mailbox before she made her way towards the city.</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. And then there was Wan</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The experiments start at the Hydra facility.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I've been sitting on this chapter for a while, thinking I'd have the time to edit or expand it - but it does not seem to be in the cards for now. So here it is, a humble offering for the post-finale blues (or at least, for the lack of new episodes, because it *is* angsty).</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>'I know you're partial to Rogers, but seriously Wan – over <em>Thor</em>?' Amina grinned as they were leaving the showers after morning training, bracing for another long and boring day of what List had announced as <em>lectures</em> and most trainees had re-christened <em>brainwashing</em>.</p><p>'Too <em>alien</em>,' Wanda countered, shuddering, followed by Pétja's dramatic sigh.</p><p>'It pains me to agree with my sister,' he joined the conversation, swinging an arm over each of their shoulders, 'but Rogers is by far the most... <em>palatable</em>.'</p><p>'What is <em>palatable</em> to you about the most nationalist symbol of America? It's in the name, Maximoff,' Sasha, ever the spoilsport, demanded in his supernaturally deep baritone which, if Wanda had to guess, would've sounded equally judgmental while whispering sweet nothings.</p><p>Pietro shrugged noncommittally, feigning ignorance as he often did when confronted with the more extremist faction of the volunteers. He'd made a reputation for himself as the group clown, so nothing he said could stick to him for long.</p><p>'He fought the Nazis?'</p><p>That was definitely a controversial statement, considering where they were. Despite Hydra's attempts at small-scale PR with the recruits, it's not like anyone remained unaware of the origins of the organization. </p><p>Sasha frowned, gearing for a fight. Before his slow brain could process all the ways in which he could question Pietro's allegiance, Wanda supplied additional arguments for the case of Captain America (<em>ugh,</em> <em>that name bothered her as well</em>) as not-so-much of an enemy.</p><p>'Aliens, too. The man has been frozen for most of the century. Who knows what kind of lies SHIELD has told him.'</p><p>'We cannot be expected to re-educate these people,' Olga pitched in from somewhere behind Sasha's shoulder – at almost two meters tall, it was surprising that her words carried across the mountain of his body.</p><p>'We also can't be the judge and jury, without taking context into account,' Amina pointed out, likely to annoy Olga more than any sense of justice she thought should be extended to the Avengers. Apart from Thor, of course.</p><p>'Maybe you prefer the Black Widow?' Pietro winked at Olga with a cheeky smile. 'She's your compatriot, after all.'</p><p>'Treacherous whore,' Olga spat.</p><p>'Aaaand that's the end of yet another pleasant conversation with you,' Wanda rolled her eyes and sped up, with Pietro and Amina in tow. 'Can you believe these Russians?' She sighed once they were out of earshot.</p><p>'I'm from Kazakhstan,' Amina reminded her. 'We've learned it's better to believe them than not.'</p><p>'Assholes to the West, assholes to the East.. maybe we should all migrate to the South like birds, spare ourselves the nerves of having to handle them. Olive and lemons trees as far as the eye can see, an beyond them – fields of lavender. How about it? Or, we could go further North, just the three of us, where there's only snow and fish. I like fish? Do you know how to fish, Amina?'</p><p>'You're joking, right?' Amina asked, suppressing a smile. Wanda would have to talk to her about the obvious torch she was holding for her brother.</p><p>'Stop your bullshit before someone takes you seriously,' she warned.</p><p>'That's the beauty of it, they never do. So I can say all this to their faces and they'll think – eh, Maximoff, he's just not all there.'</p><p>'One of these days they just might figure you out,' Wanda said uneasily. She'd noticed the increasing numbers of closed office doors around the facility; the exchanges on the hallways in ever decreasing volume. Something was coming.</p><p>*</p><p>Sasha was by far the most accomplished warrior out of their lot, but he was also the least creative when it came to strategy. It was the reason why Pietro always managed to defeat him, to the dismay of most of their friends who bet their lunch puddings or cigarette packs on the obvious victory of the bigger, stronger man. No matter how many times their mentors repeated that the trainings were supposed to serve their betterment as soldiers, and not to take the wins or defeats to heart – there was no mistaking just how personally Sasha took them. He was itching for an opportunity to one-up Pietro, which came in no time.</p><p>'We are ready to take the next step,' List said casually after a training session in late spring. 'I have promised you all a chance of being more. Who would like to take it first?'</p><p>His gaze brushed over the recruits, two dozen of them or so, but his eyes never lingered on wither Wanda or Pietro. It was curious, as they'd been dubbed his 'favorites' by most of their friends. Not a second had passed before Sasha stepped out in front of the group to volunteer.</p><p>'I would put myself up for consideration,' he said.</p><p>List inspected him head-to-toe, then shook his head.</p><p>'Not this time,' he flicked his wrist for Sasha to go back in line. He again turned to inspecting the group.</p><p>'You,' he pointed to Amina. 'Do you want to be powerful?'</p><p>Wanda wished with all she had in her for Amina to say no, though she knew it would be pointless. List had selected her, there were no backsies with Hydra.</p><p>'Yessir,' Amina stepped out, leaving the space beside Wanda cold and empty.</p><p>'Very good,' List nodded with what could almost be described as a charitable smile. 'Someone will come and brief you soon about the process.'</p><p>'Sir, if I may,' Olga coughed to bring attention to herself then stopped speaking until List turned to her, obviously amused by the interruption. He raised his eyebrows to acknowledge her, at which she continued. 'Amina is a good fighter, but I am by far the best in the group. If you.. if a female is required for the task, I would offer myself in her stead.'</p><p>List seemed to consider her petition for a second, then shrugged his shoulders in mock defeat.</p><p>'As you like, Alekseyeva.'</p><p>'Zhaparova, you are next in line, then,' he turned to say to Amina before he left. It sent goosebumps down Wanda's spine, his casual delivery as well as the implication of an order to whatever it was they were starting, which sounded like something to be feared rather than embraced.</p><p>That evening, Olga still hadn't received any information about what was to come and the whole group found their way to Pietro and Wanda's room. Despite their surface dislike of each other, List's visit had unnerved most of the trainees and they flocked to the comfrot of Pétja's easy jokes and antics.</p><p>'When they're done with me, none of you will be able to <em>touch</em> <em>me</em> in the simulator,' Olga boasted, her voice quivering only slightly on the last syllables.</p><p>'Yes yes, you will be the Hulk. Hulkess? Hulkova?' Sasha was trying to suppress his anger at being brushed aside.</p><p>'Maybe I will! And you'll finally get the thrashing you deserve!'</p><p>Everyone was laughing, mostly out of relief that they wouldn't be the first. Amina stayed uncommonly silent throughout the affair, but grabbed a hold of Wanda's arm as people started trickling out and pulled her to the side.</p><p>'He wanted me because I was the worst in training,' she said in a whisper. 'Do you know what that means?'</p><p>Wanda had an inkling, but the thought of discussing it seemed pointless.</p><p>'You're crazy, as if he keeps track of these things. He probably just noticed you because of your braids.'</p><p>'Wan, when he comes again, what do I do? I don't want to...'</p><p>'Shush,' Wanda tried to soothe her. 'Just don't wear the braids. He won't remember.'</p><p>'You think so?'</p><p>Wanda didn't think so.</p><p>'Of course,' she gently pulled one of Amina's braids and said with a wink.</p><p>*</p><p>To both of their surprise, the next person to be chosen was in deed someone else – Mateusz, a quiet Polish kid who'd shared a lunch table with Wanda once when she still hadn't met Amina, and who'd mostly kept to himself the rest of the time.</p><p>'Your hair is cool,' he'd told her during that twenty-minute lunch break, the only words they'd ever exchange.</p><p>It'd been a week since Olga had been taken away to the other part of the facility, nobody had spoken about her since. Wanda had the ominous feeling in her gut Mateusz's recruitment would end much the same.</p><p>Nobody came to their room that evening, a fact she'd been both sad and thankful for. Sad, because nobody had cared enough to bid Mateusz farewell. Thankful, because she didn't have the strength to put on her best smile and pretend everything would be okay.</p><p>'Did you notice how List never looks at either of us when he's looking for volunteers?' She asked Pietro around 1 AM, lying with her back to him and her face to the cold cement.</p><p>'Saving the best for last,' Pietro huffed.</p><p>'Don't say that.'</p><p>'It's true? You didn't really think they'd risk this procedure with their most promising candidates first? That's why he didn't take Sasha when he offered.'</p><p>Wanda shuddered beneath her blanket, brought it up to her chin.</p><p>'You think they're...'</p><p>She didn't need to finish the sentence for him to understand what she wanted to ask.</p><p>'That's my best guess.'</p><p>'Amina..'</p><p>The sound of shuffling bedding came from Pietro's side of the room, followed by soft thuds of the bare soles of his feet on the ground. The mattress creaked once he sat then spooned against Wanda's back. His weight was soothing, starting to become familiar again - they'd slept together most of their lives, more out of necessity than comfort, but never since the last of Mila's boyfriends had moved out around their fifteenth birthday and she'd relocated Wanda to her own bedroom.</p><p>'Wan, you can't get attached to these people,' he whispered against her neck, rubbing her arms for good measure. 'This.. it's gonna get much worse before it gets better, if it does.'</p><p>A stream of tears made their way across the arch of Wanda's nose, down the curve of her eye to pool on the pillow under her cheek.</p><p>'What about us?'</p><p>'Oh, come on. We're <em>indestructible.</em>'</p><p>Wanda sniffed and brushed her nose with the back of her palm.</p><p>'I just keep thinking.. all these kids, Pétja. What do they really know? What do we?'</p><p>'We know bombs,' he solemnly pointed out. 'We know the darkness they bring in their wake, intimately. We know what we need to do.'</p><p>'<em>Stark</em>.'</p><p>'Stark.'</p><p>'If they take you away – ' Wanda started, but couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence.</p><p>'You know what you need to do,' Pietro simply replied and planted a quick kiss on the back of her neck before he stood up and returned to his cot.</p><p>'I know what to do,' Wanda quietly repeated to herself as she passed the tips of her fingers against the uneven, grainy concrete. 'I <em>know</em> what to do...<em>I </em>know what to do.'</p><p>*</p><p>Despite their worst fears, life continued as usual in the recruitment center for another month or so after Mateusz disappeared. Then List visited again, only it wasn't a single recruit this time, it was five. On the next one, three. The one after, three again.</p><p>'They must've perfected the process by now,' Amina said with a hopeful glint in her eyes. 'They wouldn't be taking so many people at once if they hadn't.'</p><p>Pietro smiled, nodding – an empty gesture Wanda could see right through, but Amina took as encouragement. Before everyone gathered in their room that night, she jokingly elbowed him in the ribs though her eyes were anything but playful.</p><p>'You should kiss her tonight,' she said. 'She's never been kissed, and she's had a thing for you since we got here.'</p><p>Pietro pretended to mind the idea, but come midnight, he'd taken Amina for 'a walk' in what passed for a garden in the back of the facility. When they returned, her friend's eyes glowing, The crowd dispersed soon after, Wanda barely having the time to say goodbye.</p><p>'Listen, I want you to remember – remember you're a fucking fierce Kazakh woman who won't take any shit from anyone. You can do it. Whatever <em>it</em> is. You're gonna be okay. Okay?'</p><p>Amina had looked at her somewhat quizzically, as if the reassurance was out of place.</p><p>'Of course, Wan,' she'd laughed. 'We're <em>both</em> fierce. Soon you'll go through the process, too, and we'll be together again.'</p><p>'That's right,' Wanda had nodded, though she'd hoped with everything left in her that Amina was wrong.</p><p>*</p><p>The rhythmical sound of sharp intakes of breath woke her up a couple of hours later. At first, Wanda couldn't pin-point the origin of the sound, until she rolled to her other side and saw the frame of Pietro's back constricting and heaving in synch with it. He was sobbing. Wanda carefully unfolded the blanket she'd tucked herself in and crossed the couple of meters to his bed.</p><p>'I thought we weren't getting attached,' she tried for a lighter tone, snaking an arm around his middle. 'Come on, we don't know what's happening to them. Maybe they really are gonna be fine.'</p><p>'Do you really believe that?' The words were interspersed with violent, shaky intakes of air. Wanda wanted to be sure, but she could never lie to Pétja, not really.</p><p>'I don't know what I believe,' she settled on the least hurtful version of the truth. It did nothing to help, in fact – it seemed to make it worse.</p><p> 'Hey, <em>hey</em> –' she patted his back and tried to turn his face towards hers. 'How about I tell you a story?'</p><p>'A story?' He was confused enough to momentarily forget what had made him cry.</p><p>'Yeah, a story. About Amina, and Olga, and Mateusz.. a good story for them.'</p><p>He didn't reply, as Wanda well knew he wouldn't because to request such a childish thing was more than Pietro's ego could take, so she simply carried on. It was easy - she'd told herself a version of the story dozens of times.</p><p>When she thought of death, she thought of that science-inspired utopia she'd concocted once, on the anniversary of the Sokovia bombing, when she'd read an article about brains releasing a surge of chemicals which make everything better somehow, that make even dying alright. She'd imagined a moment for her parents then, wrote it down in her journal to resemble a finale of a really good, if melodramatic, series – two people finding each other on a red Sokovian meadow, three poppies for each blade of grass, bombs falling in the distance but never quite reaching them.</p><p>The woman had a hyacinth in her hand, though there were no other flowers quite like it to be seen in the dream – a vestige of a long-forgotten memory of the photograph Wanda had rediscovered in Mila's album. The man had a rifle hanging off his back, casually, as if it were an accessory – in line with how Wanda had seen it at the beginning of the war. So it came to be that death was wonderful, and peaceful, and happy; so it was that she could deal with not believing in an afterlife, as she'd been taught not to.</p><p>But despite all of Wanda's faith in science, and all her ability to weave realistic stories from bits and pieces of data she'd scraped on the go, as she told the story to Pietro, she wondered if our brains can ever really find the path that leads us home if home is what we feel in our <em>hearts</em>, when our hearts stop. Especially if we are unsure where this home really is, and whether it exists as more than just a wish from a dead mother's daughter, or a comfort for an atheist brother.</p><p>'What will you imagine for me, Wan?' Pietro asked, having regained his composure. 'Tell me now, so my brain doesn't have to do all that work. You were always better at it than me.'</p><p>'Stupid,' Wanda huffed. 'This is not how we die.'</p><p>'Maybe not,' he agreed, in a voice that was nevertheless smaller than she'd been used to. 'I'd like to have it in my memory, just the same.'</p><p>'I'm holding you,' Wanda whispered, trying to keep her voice even. 'I'm holding you after we have accomplished what we set out to do, and the world is safe, and everything is quiet. The bomb has stopped ticking, we know it will never go off, and we know whatever happens next will be better than what we lived through. Mama and papa are waiting and we're excited to see them, we run between the tall buildings to them and we are finally all together like the family we should have been.'</p><p>'That is a good dream,' Pietro squeezed her hand resting on his stomach, then brushed his tears away. 'Remember it, Wan, will you? In case I forget?'</p><p>Wanda didn't have anything left to say. She embraced him tighter, hoping it would be enough to delay the inevitable.</p><p>In the morning, List came for Sasha. Nobody was cheering anymore, not even Sasha looked pleased to finally be picked out. Then, just as they appeared to be done for the day, List turned around and made eye contact with Pietro for the first time since the experiments started.</p><p>'Maximoff, you, too.'</p>
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